30 Books on Terrorism & Counter- Terrorism
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PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 12, Issue 5 Counterterrorism Bookshelf: 30 Books on Terrorism & Counter- Terrorism-Related Subjects Reviewed by Joshua Sinai The books reviewed in this column are arranged according to the following topics: “Terrorism – General,” “Suicide Terrorism,” “Boko Haram,” “Islamic State,” “Northern Ireland,” and “Pakistan and Taliban.” Terrorism – General Christopher Deliso, Migration, Terrorism, and the Future of a Divided Europe: A Continent Transformed (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International, an Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2017), 284 pp., US $ 75.00 [Hardcover], ISBN: 978-1-4408-5524-5. This is a well-informed account of the impact of Europe’s refugee crisis that was generated by the post-Arab Spring conflicts’ population displacements affecting the continent’s changing political climate, economic situation, and levels of crime and terrorism. In terms of terrorism, the author points out that several significant terrorist attacks involved operatives who had entered European countries illegally, such as some members of the cells that had carried out the attacks in Paris (November 2015) and Brussels (March 2016). With regard to future terrorism trends, the author cites Phillip Ingram, a former British intelligence officer, who observed that “Conservative estimates suggest thousands of extremists have managed to slip in through the refugee crisis. And a significant number of them have experience in fighting and in planning not only simple operations, but the kind of complex ones seen in Paris and Brussels” (p. 87). The migration crisis is also affecting Europe’s politics, the author concludes, with “the fault lines of increasingly polarized left- and right-wing partisan ideologies… resulting in earthquakes of various sizes, in Europe and around the world” (p. 214). The author is an American journalist and analyst who runs the “Balkan.com” website and lives in Skopje, Macedonia. Julie Chernov Hwang, Why Terrorists Quit: The Disengagement of Indonesian Jihadists (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 230 pp., US $ 39.95 [Hardcover], ISBN: 978-1-5017-1082-7. This conceptually important account is based on the author’s extensive field research in Indonesia, where she interviewed fifty-five jihadis from seven Islamist groups in order to examine their disengagement from terrorism. The author’s thesis is that “disengagement is driven by a combination of psychological, emotional, relational, and strategic factors” (p. 8). Specifically, four factors are identified in the disengagement process: “(1) disillusionment with the group’s tactics and leaders; (2) rational assessment, where one comes to analyze the extent to which the context has changed or whether the costs of continued actions outweigh potential benefits; (3) the establishment of an alternative social network of friends, mentors, and sympathetic family members; and (4) a shift in priorities toward gainful employment and family life” (p. 8). Following a discussion of general theories of disengagement, the author explains how the Indonesian case offers “rich opportunities for those seeking to understand why Indonesian jihadists are disengaging from violence” (p. 15). To analyze these issues, the book’s chapters cover topics such as the status of Jemaah Islamiyah, the country’s primary jihadist terrorist group, and five chapters with each one presenting a case study of jihadists who disengaged from terrorism (all of whom are given pseudonyms). The next chapter, “The Role of the State and Civil Society in Disengagement Initiatives,” analyzes the effectiveness of programs by the state and civil society to facilitate disengagement and de-radicalization of Indonesian jihadists. One of the author’s findings is that these programs “lack needs assessments or outcomes assessment” despite the availability of such data, and that it “would also be advisable to prioritize disengagement, reintegration, and aftercare as an end in itself” (p. 166). The author concludes that “to disengage and reintegrate, one must have a counterbalancing support structure of friends, family, and mentors that constitute an alternative set of loyalties” (p. 184). This book is an important contribution to the theoretical literature as well as to country case studies on the factors involved in de-radicalization and disengagement from terrorism. The author is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Goucher College, in Towson, Maryland. ISSN 2334-3745 62 October 2018 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 12, Issue 5 Hans-Joachim Giessmann and Roger Mac Ginty (Eds.), The Elgar Companion to Post-Conflict Transition (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018), 392 pp., US $ 189.00 [Hardcover], ISBN: 978-1-7834- 7904-7. This edited volume is an account of regime change – generally defined as a radical replacement or overthrow of a government by another, usually by means of military force, whether internal or external, or resulting from a popular uprising. The volume’s aim is to present an overriding conceptual framework that is examined through a series of country case studies to generate findings. As the editors explain, “to identify patterns, commonalities and disjunctures in contemporary transitions that occur after civil war, secessionist conflict, popular revolution or military rule (p. 3). The case studies are arranged in five clusters of analysis: transitions after civil war (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, and Nepal); transitions after popular revolutions (German Democratic Republic, Iran, and Tunisia); transitions after violent secession (Kosovo, South Sudan, and Northern Cyprus); transitions after military rule (Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Ghana, and Myanmar); and transition after foreign intervention (Afghanistan). The concluding chapter discusses the factors that influence the success of regime change, such as those that are endogenous (e.g., the perceived legitimacy of a new regime in its “ability to provide goods and services to the population ‘under its command’) (p. 326) and exogenous (e.g., impact of international humanitarian aid). Hans-Joachim Giessmann is Executive Director of the Berghof Foundation, Germany, and Roger Mac Ginty is in the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, and the Department of Politics at the University of Manchester, UK. Walter Laqueur and Christopher Wall, The Future of Terrorism: ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the Alt-Right (New York, NY: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2018), 272 pp., US $ 26.99 [Hardcover], ISBN: 978-1-2501- 4251-1. This is an insightful and comprehensive account of the latest trends in global terrorism by Walter Laqueur, one of the top veteran experts on terrorism (who, sadly, passed away following the book’s publication at the age of 97 on September 30, 2018), and his co-author Christopher Wall, an instructor on counterterrorism for the United States Navy. Following an introductory overview of terrorism, including a discussion of the changes introduced by the fourth wave of terrorism (based on David Rapoport’s notion of the four waves of modern terrorism), the book is divided into three sections. The first section, “History and the Invention of Terrorism,” is a history of the evolution of terrorism, beginning with the French Revolution, anarchism in Russia (and the notion of terrorism as ‘propaganda by the deed’), through the end of the Second World War, including the use of terrorism by Indian nationalists. The second section, “Contemporary Terrorism,” covers modern terrorism, focusing primarily on the emergence and prevalence of al Qaida as one of the world’s major terrorist groups, as well as the emergence of the Islamic State (ISIS), and its rivalry with al Qaida. It recounts the proliferation of Islamist jihadi terrorism in Europe, North America, and in major terrorist battlegrounds such as Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen. The final section, “Reflections on Terrorism,” presents the authors’ findings on the study of terrorism, such as the psychology of terrorism, economic explanations of terrorism, the impact of religious extremism on terrorism, and weaknesses in the arguments presented by what is known as the school of ‘critical terrorism studies’. The section’s final chapter presents the authors’ findings on future trends in terrorism. An Epilogue discusses the impact of Donald Trump’s presidency on terrorism. The book’s numerous important insights include the observation that a group’s strategy of conquering territory “in the shortest amount of time possible” is also one of its significant vulnerabilities because the “‘liberation’ of territories created obvious targets for counterterrorist forces that had not existed before” (p. 13), mainly because “holding territory also means that terrorists must operate out in the open, making them easy targets for the modern air forces of most developed countries” (p. 14). One of the few points on which the authors can, in the view of this reviewer, be criticized is when they refer to Menachem Begin’s (who later became Israel’s Prime Minister) dissident right-wing terrorist group’s July 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem as helping to “establish the modern state of Israel” (p. 130). In fact, it was the mainstream Mapai-led diplomacy and the paramilitary Haganah’s armed force that brought about Israeli statehood in May 1948. The authors insightfully conclude that “terrorism is not an existential threat because of the inferior military capability terrorists normally possess short of their acquiring weapons of mass destruction.”